"Two things strike you immediately about St Mary and St Lambert. Firstly, there’s the name. It would be foolish to make too much of the dedications of Anglican churches, since few of them have remained unchanged over the centuries. Indeed, during the years between the 16th century Reformation and the 19th century sacramental revival they largely fell into disuse, and some curious current dedications are, in fact, the results of the work of well-meaning but inaccurate 18th century antiquarians. For example, several dedications in what was the Norwich Diocese were conflated or confused; Chattisham took on Shottisham’s; Kirton took on Shotley Kirkton’s. Antiquarians confused the Suffolk Hoo with the Norfolk Hoe, and thought that Suffolk's Shimpling and Norfolk's Shimpling were the same place. Great Ashfield and Badwell Ash actually swapped dedications. The enthusiasm of 19th century Rectors should also not be underestimated. At Whepstead, the parish church is dedicated to St Petronilla, uniquely in all England; but this has no basis in antiquity. Rather, someone in the 1890s had a special devotion to the Saint, or perhaps thought it was simply a nice name.
So you’ll not be surprised to learn that the Saint Lambert here is a mistake. In fact, there are three Stonhams, and this one once used the name of the Lambert family, owners of the Manor, to distinguish itself from the others. Such distinctions are rather more common in Essex. There is such a thing as a Saint Lambert, but this isn't him.
Secondly, of course, there is that tower. it is remarkable because it dates back to the 18th century (although what you see now is a rebuilding of the early 1990s). It gives the bells a quite different sound to that of them being rung in a tower of brick, stone or flint. As at Haughley, the tower appears to be a quite separate structure, as if it is only joined on incidentally to the body of the church. In many ways, this is an unusual building, and it repays the effort of walking around it. The clerestory is gorgeous, although rather lost beyond the collision of aisle and tower.
Bell chambers like the one here arise from a historical accident. After the Reformation, the adoption of Cranmer’s prayer book made bells liturgically redundant. Their only remaining uses were secular. Any number of things could have happened as a result of this, and most of them did. In some parishes, the bells, and by default the tower, fell into disuse. The weak materials from which the towers were originally constructed, coupled with puritan suspicion of ornate decorations of ecclesiastical buildings (the puritans were strong in Suffolk) meant that towers fell throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. By the 19th century there was a concern for their welfare, and an interest in liturgy, which conspired to encourage many parishes to effect repairs. But not all, and they continued to fall, often neglected by otherwise grand 19th century restorations. Acton was taken down as unsafe in 1880; Stanton All Saints collapsed in 1906. Bildeston collapsed as recently as 1975, the scaffolding for its impending restoration splintering like matchsticks in the rubble.
There were reasons, however, for towers to be cared for after the Reformation, and before the Victorians came along. In Suffolk, and especially along the coast, many were watchtowers – you can see far out to sea from the top of the churches at Southwold, Kessingland and Wrentham. Other church towers were used as strongholds. But there was another factor. There were few artistic flowerings in the English church in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Renaissance bypassed these islands, pretty much. It is therefore some recompense that the English invented recreational bell-ringing.
As well as their sacramental use within the liturgy, bells had probably always been used for ceremonial and processional purposes. In the later Middle Ages, they replaced Mass dials almost everywhere as a way of informing the people when Mass was about to start. We know they were rung on Holy Days, and tolled for the dead. When these purposes fell into disuse (ringing for services, ceremonial ringing and tolling for the dead are probably Victorian reinventions; the last of these never survived the great silence of WWII) all that was left was ringing for secular purposes – to warn of an invasion, perhaps, or to call the people together. Some churches had a clock bell (Hadleigh’s sanctus bell was adapted for this purpose), but a clock bell is not actually rung, it is struck. These uses alone were not enough to sustain the upkeep of towers everywhere in such troubled and impoverished times.
So it was a great salvation that a new use was found for the bells. This was not possible in churches with only one or two bells, which is the case of most Suffolk churches, but where there were more, they could be used to splendid effect. At Horham, for instance, which has the oldest ring of eight bells in the world. And here at Stonham Aspal; Mortlock tells us of the local squire, Theodore Eccleston, who was an enthusiastic bell-ringer. In 1742, he replaced the ring of five bells with one of ten, and the bell chamber was built to house them. I'm not clear if the tower was partly demolished to accommodate them, or if it had already fallen prey to the depredations of the two centuries since the Reformation."
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